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Sunday, 14 July 2013

On Fighting the Wrong Battles

Today as I sat at my computer I suddenly began
hearing a vaguely familiar whirring or churning sound.Oh, no, I thought.This reminds me of years gone by – ancient
times in computer-speak – when my limited computers would grunt and wheeze
because they were running out of memory or space or something.I ran a diagnostic, feeling a bit like Data
on Star Trek – or no, I didn’t feel like that at all.Even when things were going wrong Data always
seemed calm and composed.I felt
desperate.Was my computer going to
die?What should I do?Should I call in a tech?Would I have to buy a new computer?

The diagnostic found nothing.I could still hear the noise, but I was also
hearing my room fan, which was doing a reasonable job of keeping me cool
(physically if not mentally) on a rare summer’s day in Vancouver.I thought perhaps I could identify the computer noise better if I turned
off the fan.So I did.Then I could hear nothing.It was like one of those childhood movies in
which the hero thinks he hears someone walking as he walks, so he stops and
there’s nothing; he walks again, and there’s the noise; he stops … and so on.

I felt frustrated.The forces of the universe were conspiring against me.They wouldn’t let me hear the computer noise
clearly.I got up and turned the room
fan on again.There was the noise
again.Just like in the movies.

But wait.I
suddenly remembered that the room fan had been bothering me itself
recently.It had been making a periodic
whirring, churning sound.Oh, I
thought.Oh.I turned off the fan; the noise stopped.Of course.And to think I was ready to throw out my computer because something else
in my apartment was making a noise.Sigh.

I remember the last episode of Star Trek: Next
Generation.The Enterprise thinks there’s some alien entity
that needs to be rebuffed.Enterprises
of three different eras train their weapons on the entity, but things just get
worse and worse until Picard suddenly realizes that their own “defence” against
the alien is the real problem.Turn off
all the weapons, he says, and suddenly the problem is solved.

I confess there is a logic issue there: wasn’t there
at least some real problem to begin with?Some real alien entity?But let
that go.I think of a clever virus from
a few years back.Actually, it wasn’t a
virus at all, but a malicious message warning people their computers had a
virus and that in order to combat it they would have to take the following
steps – which, it turned out, if they did them, actually disabled their
computers.

So I am wary of people promoting nostrums for
problems that may not even exist.Just
today a friend of mine was talking of a new app (something that could let you
order a drink without summoning a waiter) as something that was solving a
problem that didn’t exist.It could put
some waiters out of work, though, I thought.

I am wary of solutions when there are no problems,
though of course sometimes there are real problems.Why, there’s this other noise my computer’s
been making, and this time, trust me, it’s really coming from the computer:
what should I do about it?

Sometimes there are real problems, but sometimes we
just need to take a deep breath.